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Shade of Aran
The Shade of Aran is a boss in the abandoned tower of Karazhan. He is the spirit of Nielas Aran, the father of Medivh - the previous occupant of Karazhan. He is located in the Guardian's Library, which is a small, circular room (about 45 yards in diameter), with one door that closes and locks as soon as the fight begins. The Shade of Aran is an optional boss. However, after he is defeated, a teleport to his room becomes available from Berthold the Doorman, and all trash mobs from the Curator to Aran (exc. one pack outside Illhoof's door) cease to respawn. So, it's a very good idea to kill him. (The trash above his library is linked to Netherspite.) Abilities * ~900k HP * very low armor * Immune to Mind Numbing Poison, Curse of Tongues, and Silence. Basic Spells * Frostbolt - 3 sec cast, 3500 to 4500 frost damage and 4 sec slow * Fireball - 2 sec cast, 3910 to 5290 fire damage * Arcane Missiles - 5 sec channeled, shoots 5 missiles each dealing 1260 to 1540 arcane damage (6300-7700 total) * Chains of Ice - 10 second root, does not break on damage. Dispellable. * Slow - Reduces movement and melee attack speed by a considerable amount for 10 seconds. Dispellable. * AoE Counterspell - 10 yard radius AoE around Aran, occurs very often. Locks out schools of magic for 10 sec. All of Aran's basic spells have infinite range (even through walls, they hit anywhere in the instance) and are randomly targeted. It is possible to interrupt and lock out his basic abilities (with Counterspell/Pummel/Earth Shock etc.), up to the point where he starts to use his weak melee attack. He rarely takes a swing even when not all his schools are locked. When meleeing, he uses a normal aggro table (and often will attack a rogue or warrior in melee range). It has been noted that his Arcane Missiles have a preponderance to be targetted toward the raid member with the lowest percentage health. All slowing and root effects are dispellable (magic), and can be broken by the usual methods. Special Abilities Every 30-35 seconds, Aran uses one of his three special abilities (never the same twice in a row). The special abilities cannot be interrupted or locked out, and they are real killers. * Flame Wreath - 5 sec cast which creates a fiery aura (which lasts 20 sec) around 3 random people in the raid. When the auras are triggered by moving over them, they will deal 3-4k fire damage to everyone in the room. * Blizzard - 1313 to 1687 damage every 2 seconds and slows movement speed by 65%, large AoE that moves slowly clockwise around the room * Magnetic Pull / Super Arcane Explosion - Pulls everyone to the center of the room, followed by a 10 second cast that will deal 9,000-11,000 aoe damage in a 20 yard radius. Water Elementals At 40% HP, the Shade of Aran summons 4 Elite Water Elementals with ~10,000 HP. They shoot a constant stream of Waterbolts for ~1000-2000 damage and will despawn after 90 seconds. They can be feared/banished for the duration. Regenerate Mana When the Shade of Aran gets down to 20% mana or less (about 30k), he will do an emote, Polymorph the entire raid, conjure some water, and start drinking. After about 10 seconds, the polymorph will break and he'll do an AoE Pyroblast right thereafter. If Aran is interrupted while drinking, he will simply use a Potion and Pyroblast. The Pyroblast does 7000-7500 damage to each raid member. As of Patch 2.2, the polymorphs affects characters normally immune to the effect, such as druids in a form. Elementals may break one or more of the sheeps during this time. When the Shade of Aran sits down, any healers released from polymorph by an elemental should heal to full himself and anyone low on health or the Pyroblast will kill you. If Aran reaches 20% mana again after the first Mass Polymorph, he will not polymorph and pyroblast again, he will just drink a potion and continue. As of 2.1.2 you can use Insignia of the Alliance/Horde to get out of the polymorph while he drinks. Shadows of Aran After 12 minutes, he will go berserk calling Shadows of Aran. They have various high-damage AoE abilities which will wipe you within seconds. This is not a serious concern; the fight should never take that long. Strategy The problem in this fight is that the whole raid must learn to avoid damage. The Shade of Arans basic attacks are not very dangerous, but the special attacks are deadly. Each raid member must pay attention which attack is upcoming, nobody can sit back and just do their usual routine. Once everybody learns how to move (or when not to move), the fight actually becomes rather easy. In order to avoid the Magnetic Pull/Arcane Explosion everybody must run to the outer wall of the room, the Blizzard forces people towards the center (or the other side of the room), and Flame Wreath inhibits movement. Beyond this, casters want to stay outside the AoE silence and classes with spell interrupt abilities want to concentrate on what he's casting. The encounter cannot be reset. Gear Aggro is of almost no relevance, because Aran chooses his targets semi-randomly, thus the tanks should don DPS gear. If the raid chooses not to interrupt arcane missiles, some arcane resistance can be useful. Everyone in the group should strive for at least 8k HP after buffs, more is better. Even healers and ranged DPS must be able to survive a wave of arcane missiles (7k), and everybody must be able to survive the pyroblast (7.5k). Interrupts Arans standard attacks (Fireball, Frots Bolt and Arcane Missile) can all be interrupted. By interrupting his spells, the raid can take some influence on how fast Aran spends his mana. This is important, because it has to be avoided that the polymorph/fireblast (at 20% mana) and the water elementals (at 40% health) occur close to each other. When either health or mana reach the critical percentage, the other must be clearly away from the threshold. For a raid new to this encounter (with comparably low DPS), it is advisable to interrupt only Arcane Missile, and let him freely cast Frost Bolt and Fireball. This will maximize Arans mana usage, and thus the polymorph/pyroblast will occur early, clearly before he reaches 40% health. After the polymorph, the raid can interrupt any of his spells, to minimize damage taken. If the raids DPS are high enough that pyroblast and water elementals happen close to each other even though only the Arcane Missiles are interrupted, it's time to switch to letting Aran cast the Missiles freely, and interrupt Fireball and Frost Bolt. This will conserve his mana, so that the Water Elementals will occur first. If DPS are really high, the polymorph will finally not occur at all. Fireballs and Frost Bolts should be interrupted near the end of their casting time, because he expends mana only at the end of the cast and he will be doing nothing else for nearly 2s. Arcane Missiles should be interrupted early, as he spends the mana upfront and thus they will cause less damage. It is useful to assign each player with an interrupt ability one type of spell which he should take care of, this avoids everybody interrupting the same spell, and then have the abilities on cooldown for the next one. It should be noted that Feral Druids CAN use Feral Charge to interrupt any of Aran's three schools. It will still interrupt his spells even though he is immune to the snare. Blizzard This special attack will materialize as a blue, translucent cloud on the floor that slowly moves clock-wise along the outer perimeter of the room until it has completed a whole 360° turn and disappears again once it reaches its point of origin. The cloud will snare any player it touches and is trailed by a damaging AoE blizzard which will extend backwards up to 180° of the blizzards' path. Players in melee range to Aran do not have to worry about the blizzard as it will only affect the outer radius of the room. Ranged fighters and healers should always keep a lookout for the cloud and run away clock-wise from it (but avoid running into the tail of the blizzard) unless they are already affected by the snare, in wich case they should immediately turn to cross through the safe center of the room. This will likely expose them to Aran's silencing counterspell, but is still the lesser of two evils. If you keep your raid evenly spread out in the room (in particular the healers), this should not be a serious problem. Flame Wreath If Flame Wreath is upcoming, the whole raid must immediately stop moving, simple as that. People must wait until the auras are clearly visible, and may only move again when they are sure they will in no way come near one of them. The effect is triggered in particular by the following: * All forms of player movement, including jumping, sitting down, standing up or turning * Paladins' Divine Shield * Rogues Cloak of Shadows * Accepting a resurrection (Rebirth or Soulstone) * Mages' Blink * Druids' shapeshifting * It is possible that Tauren effected by a Shaman's Bloodlust ability will break trigger the flame wreath when they increase in size (unconfirmed) The following will not trigger the effect: * Spell casting * Movement resulting from a spell cast (like Mind Flay) * Nether Protection * Pets People who trigger the Flame Wreath effect are often subjected to a torrent of verbal abuse by the rest of the group. Magnetic Pull / Arcane Explosion Prior to this, Aran will always cast an AoE slow. If everybody starts immediately running right after the magnetic pull (no turning around, just run!), even slowed people can reach the wall before the explosion. The slow can be broken by PvP trinkets, Rogues' Cloak of Shadows or Improved Sprint, Druids' Shapeshift, Warlocks' Spellstone, Paladins' Blessing of Freedom, and Gnomes' Escape Artist. Aspect of Cheetah/Pack will also help. Mages can blink to an edge and use the extra time for an evocate. Priests and Paladins should keep an eye out for slow reactions (or anyone in "Chains of Ice"), since the slowing effects can be dispelled. Warriors can use Intervene to quickly charge up to a raid member at the edge of the room. Water Elementals A Warlock is invaluable here, because the Water Elementals can be banished, stunned and feared, and are susceptible to Curse of Tongues. The adds should be tanked and nuked ASAP. It helps a lot if the tank wears frost resistance gear. The elementals have roughly 13k HP as of the newest patch, so they can be burned down very easily. Because of this, having a warlock in the group is not as important as before. Nevertheless, the spawning of the Elementals can become a problem when happening simultaneously with a special attack of Aran where everyone is too distracted to immediately grab the aggro of an Elemental before healing aggro draws their combined fire on a poor healer. This is exactly the one moment in this battle you want to save up any defensive or offensive special abilities or trinkets with cool down up for. Regenerate Mana If the raids DPS are high enough, and the interrupts work well, this phase does not necessarily occur. If it does occur, the healers have to be on their toes to very quickly heal the raid after the Pyroblast (preferably using AoE heals). The polymorph breaks a very short time before the pyroblast, so it is possible to cast some protections (Priest shield, HoTs, Paladin bubble, Mage fire ward, fire resistance totems etc.) right before the Pyroblast. After the blast, raid members should use health potions and Healthstones to heal quickly. This polymorph will even work on characters which are normally immune to polymorph. Druids in Tree of Life form are not considered a valid target for the polymorph however. Therefore, a raid can have the druid cast Lifebloom or another HoT on as many people as he can in anticipation of the AoE Pyroblast. Preparing the raid member with the lowest HP who is not in the druids group to receive Swiftmend would also be an option, as well as preparing Nature's Swiftness to cast either Rebirth (if needed) or Healing Touch. Druids may now use Barkskin to reduce the damage dealt to them by the Pyroblast, which for druid healers may be essential in keeping themselves alive. Then cast Tranquility right after the Pyroblast to quickly heal up your half of the raid to full health again. Loot Quotes Aggro *"Please, no more! My son... he's gone mad!" *"Who are you? What do you want? Stay away from me!" *"I will not be tortured again!" Flame Wreath *"Burn you hellish fiends!" *"I'll show you this beaten dog still has some teeth!" Blizzard *"Back to the cold dark with you!" *"I'll freeze you all!" Arcane Explosion *"Yes, yes, my son is quite powerful... but I have powers of my own!" *"I am not some simple jester! I am Nielas Aran!" Low Mana / AoE Pyroblast *"Surely you would not deny an old man a replenishing drink? No, no I thought not." Summon Water Elementals *"I'm not finished yet! No, I have a few more tricks up me sleeve." Player Death *"Torment me no more!" *"I want this nightmare to be over!" Aran's berserk *"You've wasted enough of my time... let these games be finished!" Aran's death *"At last the nightmare is over..." is equipped by a raid member *"Where did you get that?! Did HE send you??" Patches and Hotfixes External links Category:Ghosts Category:Humans Category:Bosses Category:Instance:Karazhan